MONTREAL – Bell Canada today expanded on its plan simplify the process for service providers needing access to aerial infrastructure (poles, mostly) in Québec.
The company has been sharply criticized from many corners for the slow, onerous processes network builders must navigate in order to attach wires and other gear to Bell poles. This year the company has acknowledged this is a problem and pledged to make changes.
The issue of support structures (on a national basis) is also the subject of a full CRTC proceeding.
Service providers, says today’s announcement, “will now be able to conduct their own structural surveys and carry out work as soon as their own engineers have confirmed safety standards have been met, followed by inspections by Bell network professionals to ensure full standards compliance. These changes will accelerate access to thousands of poles throughout the province more quickly. Bell expects to sign agreements with service providers as early as January,” it says.
The big incumbent is establishing a Centre of Excellence “to share best practices with service providers, improve communications through a dedicated technical and decision-making resource person assigned to projects, and provide a toll-free 1-800 line for assistance,” reads the announcement.
“The new initiatives put in place by Bell and Hydro-Québec and the discussions within the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation’s Coordination Table have considerably accelerated the deployment of our high-speed Internet project in the Autray Regional County Municipality,” said David Morin, information technology director for Autray Regional County Municipality, in the Bell release. “With the active collaboration of Bell teams, we were able to expedite nearly 25% of our project in just a few weeks. We are very optimistic about the continuation of our project in 2021.”
The new measures are part of a process initiated earlier this year with the Coordination Table co-created by Bell, Hydro-Québec, Telus and the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation. As part of this same action plan, Bell and Hydro-Québec earlier announced a series of measures that are already accelerating a significant number of projects.
This morning’s announcement did not assuage competitor Videotron at all. “The last-minute announcements made by Bell this morning constitute a blatant admission of the negative impacts their unfair maneuvers have on the regions of Quebec. This telecommunications giant remains a serious obstacle for thousands of Quebecers who finally want access to high speed Internet. We hope that the CRTC will see for itself the difficulties that our teams in the field have been encountering for years and that it quickly impose solutions to settle the issue once and for all, ”said Videotron CEO Jean-François Pruneau in a statement.
